The Full Service Firm: McKenna Comments For Canada’s The Bottom Line On Legal Services
By Francine • Nov 1st, 2014I’m quoted extensively in an October 2014 The Bottom Line piece on the Big Four expansion into full-fledged legal services.
Archive for the ‘You Can Quote Me On That’ Category
SEC’s Final Pay Rules Coming Any Day: Will They Be Enough To Level Playing Field?
By Francine • Jul 6th, 2014Senator Robert Menéndez [D-NJ], author of the Dodd-Frank pay ratio disclosure rule, didn’t take “not yet” for an answer when SEC Chair Mary Jo White testified before the Senate Banking Committee in late July a year ago. Menendez told White: “I’ve been waiting for several years now.” (Me, too!)
Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac Are Back: More “Adjustments”, More Calls For Reform
By Francine • May 12th, 2014“If accounting errors were felonies in California, Fannie Mae would already be serving life under Three Strikes.” That’s what GoingConcern.com said. See what I told TheStreet.com about Fannie Mae’s latest multi-billion dollar “adjustments”.
The SEC’s AgFeed Complaint: No Restatement Means No Sarbanes-Oxley Clawback
By Francine • Mar 23rd, 2014The AgFeed case is the mother lode for an SEC that says it’s ready to rack up some accounting fraud enforcement points and, perhaps, pursue a more aggressive enforcement approach to sparsely utilized Sarbanes-Oxley provisions like Section 304, clawbacks.
Not That Satisfying: SEC Slams KPMG For Independence Violations
By Francine • Jan 28th, 2014It’s been almost three years since I first broke the story of KPMG’s loaned tax staff arrangement with audit client GE. On January 24 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced an $8.2 million settlement with KPMG over violations of auditor-independence rules. The wheels of justice turn very slowly. But the GE case was not one of the three cited as the subject of the enforcement action.
Jamie Dimon (And JP Morgan) Besieged
By Francine • Aug 20th, 2013A blog post at Medium.com last Friday updated everyone with the latest on the JP Morgan “Whale” traders who were indicted last week and assorted other energy trading and mortgage related investigations. But there’s more!
The Economic Significance of Accounting and the Key Role of Integrity in the Profession
By Francine • Jul 14th, 2013Robert Ricketts, Texas Tech University and Rawls College of Business accounting department chairman, invited me to speak at his school last April. Here’s a link to the presentation, an excerpt and some additional comments on recent news.
Berkshire Hathaway and Swiss Re: It Wasn’t Really A Win-Win
By Francine • May 8th, 2013Like a lot of things Buffett and Berkshire, there’s more to the Swiss Re dispute resolution story than the snappy repartee tells you.
How KPMG Explains Scott London To The Accounting Professors
By Francine • Apr 29th, 2013Here’s how KPMG Chairman John Veihmeyer explained Scott London’s inside trading and the firm’s response to accounting professors, an important stop in the audit industry supply chain.
E&Y, Their Audit Client Wal-Mart, and Value Pricing
By Francine • Mar 23rd, 2013This post about Ernst & Young’s aggressive tax advice to audit client Wal-Mart was originally posted October 29, 2007. It’s worth everyone – I’m talking to you SEC and PCAOB – taking another look at this given Wal-Mart’s new Mexican bribery problems and the SEC investigation of Ernst & Young for tax lobbying to audit clients. (Ernst & Young has been silent and left out of most media discussion about Wal-Mart’s FCPA problems in Mexico and elsewhere.)
Francine McKenna (@retheauditors) is the Transparency Reporter at MarketWatch.com, a Dow Jones publication, where her work is also featured frequently in the Wall Street Journal. McKenna had more than twenty-five years of experience in consulting and professional services including tenure at two Big 4 firms, both in the US and abroad before becoming a journalist. Look for her prior columns, 